This report shows trends and changes in human mobility patterns for Harborough during the COVID-19 pandemic in UK. Mobility patterns data is obtained from the Google Mobility Reports published by Google since April 2020 in an effort to support researchers during the pandemic.
The Google Mobility reports contains data on people’s movements collected by Google. The data is divided in six categories and reports the relative changes in mobility patterns during the COVID-19 restrictions period compared to the baselines for each category in a period of time considered to be the normal before the COVID-19 pandemic. The baselines are calculated as the median value for each category and day of the week from January 3rd 2020 to February 6th 2020. Since the data reported is normalized to a baseline, it is not possible to directly compare day to day to changes. In addition, during weekends people do not work and tend to engage in recreational activities like going to a park or shopping, resulting in a change of the mobility patterns during the weekend, that are not caused by the tightening of restrictions. When interpreting the figures it is important to consider that variations are also be affected by like local conditions, by public holidays and even by the weather. For that, it is better to compare towns and regions that have similar characteristics (i.e. rural areas together) and to have local knowledge of the area considered. Mobility data are collected from those users who turned the location history on -off by default- on their Google account. The precision of the data depends on the user’s phone settings and on connectivity. When the number of users in a category is not enough to maintain the user’s privacy the report omits to include the change for the day for that category, leaving gaps in the data. For additional information on the methodology, please visit the Google Mobility Reports help page. Google mobility data is disseminated at national level and in the case of UK using a geography that can be mapped (with some exceptions) to the 2019 Local Authority Districts. The geography used in the report is based on previous work from ONS and might not reflect the current administrative geography.
The mobility data published by Google are divided in six categories, in an effort to capture the main domains of human activities affected by the restrictions imposed during the pandemic. A user in proximity of one of the places contained the mobility category will be allocated to it. The numerical value reported in the data is the change in visitors from the baseline January 5th to 6th of February 2020 for all except the residential category where it is the change in duration of stay at home.
Mobility trend for the retail and recreation category
Mobility trend for the groceries and pharmacies category
Mobility trend for the parks category
Mobility trend for the transit stations category
Mobility trend for the residential category
Mobility trend for the workplaces category
Tier evolution leading to the third national lockdown
COVID-19 restrictions timeline
Following the first national lockdown, the restrictions were eased and the government promoted incentives to support businesses, like the Eat out to Help out scheme that started on the 3rd and ended on the 31st of August 2020. In December 2020 the tier system came in place for a the second time with the additional Tier 4, delimiting those local authorities with the tighter restrictions. The following charts show the median change from the baseline for each mobility category during the restriction period. The charts are in chronological order and include the median values for the regional geography and for UK. The first chart reports values for the period 15th of February to 23rd of March 2020 when the first national lockdown came into place and it can be used in conjunction with the baseline to help better understanding the median values for Harborough.
Median mobility for the Before First National Lockdown period from January 01 to March 23 2020 and for the First National Lockdown period from March 23 to May 13 2020
Median mobility for the Outdoor recreation permitted period from May 13 to June 01 2020 and for the Rule of six period from June 01 to July 04 2020
Median mobility for the Hospitality reopen. Gatherings up to thirty people period from July 04 to September 14 2020 and for the Eat out to help out period from August 03 to August 31 2020
Median mobility for the The new rule of six both indoor and outdoor period from September 14 to September 25 2020 and for the Hospitality had to shut between 10pm and 6am period from September 25 to October 14 2020
Median mobility for the First three tier system period from October 14 to November 05 2020 and for the Second National Lockdown. Meet one person outside period from November 05 to December 02 2020
Median mobility for the Tier system was reintroduced period from December 02 to December 19 2020 and for the Tier 4 introduced period from December 19 to January 06 2021
Median mobility for the Third National Lockdown period from January 06 to March 08 2021 and for the Schools and care homes reopen period from March 08 to March 29 2021
The report was compiled by the Local Data Spaces team, which includes:
Mark Green, Administrative Data Research UK and University of Liverpool, email: mark.green@liverpool.ac.uk
Simon Leech, Administrative Data Research UK and University of Leeds, email: s.leech@leeds.ac.uk
Jacob Macdonald, Administrative Data Research UK and University of Liverpool, email: jacob.macdonald@liverpool.ac.uk
Maurizio Gibin, Administrative Data Research UK and University College London, email: m.gibin@ucl.ac.uk
The piece of work was funded by the ESRC’s (UKRI) Local Data Spaces Project, which is novel collaboration between the ONS, JBC and ESRC designed to open up secure data to Local Authorities to support responses to COVID-19. If you would like to contact the team about any of the data presenting in this report or discuss further opportunities within the Local Data Spaces project, please contact one of the following:
Mark Green, Administrative Data Research UK and University of Liverpool, email: mark.green@liverpool.ac.uk
Victoria Chenery, Office for National Statistics, email: victoria.chenery@ons.gov.uk
This work was produced using statistical data from ONS. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. This work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce National Statistics aggregates.
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